Our definition of "Game of the Year" is getting a tad narrow and predictable.

LAS VEGAS—In the Academy Awards season, the term "Oscar bait" has developed as a somewhat derogatory term for the kind of overwrought period dramas that seem tailor-made to take home a Best Picture statuette. After attending last night's DICE Awards ceremony in Las Vegas (put on by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences for 19 years now), I'm beginning to think we should start similarly referring to a certain type of open-world role-playing and adventure game as "DICE bait."

Fallout 4's Game of the Year win last night (and the strong performance of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in other categories) cements the open-world, single-player RPG as the genre to beat at the DICE Awards. Four of the last seven DICE Game of the Year recipients have fit that same broad gameplay mold: Dragon Age: Inquisition in 2014, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in 2011, and Mass Effect 2 in 2010. All four games also won in the Best Role-playing Game category, and these games tended to clean up in the less specific categories focused on general art and design, too.

Further Reading

If you expand the definition of DICE bait slightly to include more linear (but equally cinematic and character-driven) adventure games, you'll find two more recent DICE Game of the Year winners: Naughty Dog's Uncharted 2 in 2009 and The Last of Us in 2013. It's not just limited to DICE either; top picks at ceremonies like the Game Developers Choice Awards and The Game Awards show a similar bias to just a couple genres.

I'm not here to argue that any of these games are undeserving, per se. The kind of games that work as DICE bait are all technically excellent games with well-realized worlds that routinely draw players in for dozens or even hundreds of hours. It's hard to argue that any of them shouldn't at least be on a short list of games under consideration for any industry honors.

But by focusing on a narrow subset of gaming as representative of the industry's best year after year, the awards are getting predictable and a bit reductive of a highly varied medium. Consistently picking an open-world RPG or sweeping adventure as Game of the Year ignores vast swathes of the industry. Everything from competitive online e-sports to cleverly designed puzzle games to family-friendly titles to original indie games might as well not even hope for the top award most years.

That might not matter much directly to many players who continue to buy and love all sorts of games regardless of what awards pickers say. But it reflects what the industry considers the best of its output, and that may reveal what direction the industry largely wants to take itself in the future.

Action gaming’s long-past awards heyday

To be fair, the gaming academy's top award used to be even more predictable. After an initial four-year run with a myriad of gaming styles in DICE's Game of the Year winners (Goldeneye, Ocarina of Time, The Sims, and Diablo II), action games absolutely took over the category. From 2001 to 2007, top honors at what was then called the AIAS Awards ceremony always went to a game that also won the Action Game of the Year category (or the sub-categories devoted to computer and console "first-person action" games some years). For a span of seven years, if your game wasn't primarily focused on shooting or slashing people, you could forget about winning one of the industry's highest honors.

Further Reading

The game industry as a whole has become much richer and more varied since then. And to be fair, the rest of this year's DICE Awards reflected that quite well. Rocket League (my personal pick for Game of the Year) took home a number of awards for its instantly compelling combination of soccer and remote-controlled cars. The 2D Ori and the Blind Forest pulled off some surprising wins in the artistic categories amid some highly polished 3D competition. Innovative titles like Her Story and Undertale also mustered quite a few nominations, even if they didn't take home any awards.

And the academy's more than 22,000 voting members have proved capable of pulling off some surprising Game of the Year picks in recent years. LittleBigPlanet in 2008 and Journey in 2012 both broke the usual Game of the Year mold, winning based on wholly new gameplay ideas rather than merely on solid execution of familiar action or open-world tropes. They're also the only two games to win the top award despite an E for Everyone rating from the ESRB, fighting against a bias for "mature," blood-soaked storytelling within the usual DICE bait.

Still, the DICE awards Game of the Year spot is becoming almost as tired and staid as the Oscars. There, the odds-on favorite for best-picture is usually a gaudy historical drama, one that often valorizes the film industry itself. Gaming's Academy Awards can do better. As the industry continues to evolve and expand, I'd urge voting members of the academy and members of the public to look past the usual genre suspects and expand their thinking on what the year's best game can look like.

Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl